guix/NEWS
2005-01-12 10:27:46 +00:00

91 lines
2.8 KiB
Text

Version 0.7
* Binary patching. When upgrading components using pre-built binaries
(through nix-pull / nix-channel), Nix can automatically download and
apply binary patches to already installed components instead of full
downloads. Patching is "smart": if there is a *sequence* of patches
to an installed component, Nix will use it. Patches are currently
generated automatically between Nixpkgs (pre-)releases.
* Simplifications to the substitute mechanism.
* Nix-pull now stores downloaded manifests in /nix/var/nix/manifests.
* Metadata on files in the Nix store is canonicalised after builds:
the last-modified timestamp is set to 0 (00:00:00 1/1/1970), the
mode is set to 0444 or 0555 (readable and possibly executable by
all; setuid/setgid bits are dropped), and the group is set to the
default. This ensures that the result of a build and an
installation through a substitute is the same; and that timestamp
dependencies are revealed.
Version 0.6
Major changes include the following:
* Rewrite of the normalisation engine.
* Multiple builds can now be performed in parallel (option `-j').
* Distributed builds. Nix can now call a shell script to forward
builds to Nix installations on remote machines, which may or may
not be of the same platform type.
* Option `--fallback' allows recovery from broken substitutes.
* Option `--keep-going' causes building of other (unaffected)
derivations to continue if one failed.
* Improvements to the garbage collector (i.e., it should actually work
now).
* Setuid Nix installations allow a Nix store to be shared among
multiple users.
* Substitute registration is much faster now.
* A utility `nix-build' to build a Nix expression and create a symlink
to the result int the current directory; useful for testing Nix
derivations.
* Manual updates.
* `nix-env' changes:
* Derivations for other platforms are filtered out (which can be
overriden using `--system-filter').
* `--install' by default now uninstall previous derivations with the
same name.
* `--upgrade' allows upgrading to a specific version.
* New operation `--delete-generations' to remove profile
generations (necessary for effective garbage collection).
* Nicer output (sorted, columnised).
* More sensible verbosity levels all around (builder output is now
shown always, unless `-Q' is given).
* Nix expression language changes:
* New language construct: `with E1; E2' brings all attributes
defined in the attribute set E1 in scope in E2.
* Added a `map' function.
* Various new operators (e.g., string concatenation).
* Expression evaluation is much faster.
* An Emacs mode for editing Nix expressions (with syntax highlighting
and indentation) has been added.
* Many bug fixes.
Version 0.5 and earlier
Please refer to the Subversion commit log messages.